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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



CHARCOALS 

OF 

NEW AND OLD 

NEW YORK 



OF NEW AND OLD 



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F/ 



PICTURES AND TEXT BY 
F. HOPKINSON SMITH 




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GARDENCITY NEWYORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

MCMXII 



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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TRANSLATION INTO FORKIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 






INTRODUCTION 




INTRODUCTION 

NEW YORK CITY, below its man-piled coverings, is a huge 
stone lizard sprawled flat on its belly, its head erect at Spuyten- 
Tuyvel, its arms and legs touching the two Rivers, its tail 
flopping the Battery. 

All along the spine and flanks of this Reptile of Gneiss tormenting 
men dig and bore and blast: driving tunnels through its vitals; scoop- 
ing holes for sub-cellars five floors under ground; running water pipes 
and gas mains; puncturing its skin with hypodermics of steam; weight- 
ing it with skyscrapers, the dismal streets below dark as sunless ravines; 
plastering its sides with grass bordered by asphalt into which scraggly 
shrubs are stuck — and as a crowning indignity — criss-crossing its 
backbone with centipedes of steel, highways for endless puffing trains 
belching heat and gas. 

This has been going on in constantly increasing malevolence since 
the Dutch landed, and will continue to go on until three or four, or per- 
haps six, brand-new cities, each one exactly above the other, are piled 
on top of the poor beast. What will happen then, especiafly if it loses 
aU patience and some fine morning gives an angry shiver, as would 
an old horse shaking off flies, a lucky survivor near the Golden Gate 
may know, but no one questions that it would be unpleasant for the 
flies. 



INTRODUCTION 

In the mean lime the sun shines on spider-web bridges; lofty 
buildings with gold-headed canes of towers; miles of sidewalks obscured 
by millions of people; endless ribbons of streets swarming with wheeled 
beetles, and countless acres of upturned ground scarred with the ruins 
of the old to make ready for the new, while over, through, and in it all 
stir the breeze and thrill, the spirit and courage of a Great City, made 
great by Great Men for other Great Men yet unborn to enjoy. 

In this twisted, seething mass stand quaint houses with hipped 
roofs; squat buildings crouching close to escape being trampled on — 
some hugging the sides of huge steel giants as if for protection ; patches 
of thread-bare sod sighed over by melancholy trees guarding long for- 
gotten graves; narrow, baffled streets dodging in and out, their tired 
eyes on the river; stretches of wind-swept spaces bound by sea-walls, 
off which the eager, busy tugs and statelier ships weave their way, 
waving flags of white steam as they pass ; wooden wharves choked with 
queer shaped bales smelling of spice, and ill-made boxes stained with 
bilge water, against which lie black and white monsters topped with 
red funnels, surmounting decks of steel. 

All these in the very chaos of their variety are the spoil of the 
painter. Some of them are reproduced in these pages. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



I 


Wall street 






1 


II 


The Skyscraper . . . . . 






7 


III 


The Brooklyn Bridge . . . . 






13 


IV 


The City Hall 






19 


V 


Castle Garden 






25 


VI 


Behind Shinbone Alley 






33 


VII 


Elizabeth Street .... 






41 


VIII 


Clinton Court .... 






47 


IX 


No. 5 West Twenty-eighth Street 






55 


X 


The Little Church Around the Corner 






63 


XI 


The Grand Canon of the Yellow . 






69 


XII 


The Stock Exchange . 






75 


XIII 


The Upheaval .... 






83 


XIV 


The Subway— Bridge Station 






89 


XV 


Manhattan 






. 95 


XVI 


Madison Square .... 






101 


XVII 


Gansevoort Market 






. 107 


XVIII 


Edgar Allan Poe's House at Fordham 






. 115 


XIX 


Jumel Mansion .... 






. 123 


XX 


The Bronx ..... 






. 131 


XXI 


The W'illows 






. 139 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The ^Yashington Arch (Title) 

The Harbor (Introduction) 

Wall Street . 

The Skyscraper 

The Brooklyn Bridge 

The City Hall 

Castle Garden 

Behind Shinbone Alley 

Elizabeth Street 

Clinton Court 

No. 5 West Twenty-eighth Street . 

The Little Church Around the Corner 

The Grand Cafion of the Yellow . 

The Stock Exchange 

The Upheaval .... 

The Subway— Bridge Station 

Manhattan . . . . • 

Madison Square .... 

Gansevoort Market 

Edgar Allan Poe's House at Fordham 

The Jumel Mansion 

The Bronx 

The Willows 



PAGE 

V ' 

ix" 
5^ 
11^ 
17 -^ 

23'' 

29^ 

37^ 

45*^ 

51^ 

59^ 

67^ 

73"^ 

79' 

87^ 

93"^ 

99'' 

105 

111 

119^ 

127'^' 

135 

143 



CHARCOALS 

OF 

NEW AND OLD 

NEW YORK 



WALL STREET 



I 

WALL STREET 

WHEN old Peter Stuyvesant, in 1653, built his split tree-trunk 
of a wall twelve feet high, running from river to river, he had 
in mind the protection of a few isolated houses fronting a 
parade ground guarded by sentries : we have the same dead line to-day, 
but it is to keep out the thieves. The wall came down in 1699, and 
then the Slave Market and slaughter houses followed, together with 
all the horrors which the broom of Municipal Government sweeps be- 
fore it. 

Up the street, on the edge of the hill, old Trinity — arbiter of peace 
— raised its front, its shadow falling on the illustrious dead who had 
fashioned one phase of the new out of the old, and whose names still tell 
the stor\- of the past. Then the years rolled on, and there came the Sub- 
Treasun,-, its own inherent dignity glorified by Ward's statue, and then 
along the narrow curb the fight for place began. One after another 
huge structures of steel and stone arose; while big swaggering bullies 
of buildings locked arms with the clouds, looking down boastfully on 
lesser folk. 

How he would storm, that hot-headed, irascible, honest old Peter, 
could he see it all; and how his old wooden leg would stamp up and 
down the asphalt when he found his own stentorian voice, which had 
once dominated the colonies, drowned in the mighty surge and clash of 
the forces of to-day: the never-ending roar of frenzied men bent on 
gain ; the rumble of wheels and clatter of hoofs ; the hum and whirr of 

3 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AXD OLD NEW YORK 

countless machines, — one great united orchestra shouting the Battle 
Cr>- of the New Republic — America's Song of Success. 

Out of the din, overlooking the struggle, are, here, and there 
oases of silence, where self-contained men sit in carpeted offices behind 
guarded doors, armed with pens whose briefest tracings spell poverty 
or wealth; their fingers pressing tiny buttons that sway the markets 
of the world. 

Hedged in but still defiant, the Old Church, undismayed, fearless, 
guarding its dead — still lifts its slender finger pointing up to God, its 
chimes calling the people to prayer. 

Oft-times, even in the thick of the fight, men listen; leave their 
desks and within the sacred precincts, kneel and worship. Then there 
soars a note of triumph that rises above the tumult of gain and en- 
deavor, — a note that lifts the struggle out of the sordid, — a note that 
steadies and redeems. 



THE SKYSCRAPER 



II 

THE SKYSCRAPER 

THE Demon of Gain and Unrest,— that ruthless ogre which 
recognizes nothing but its own interest,— is responsible for 
this, the greatest monstrosity of our time. No more time- 
honored treasures,— houses, churches and breathing spaces. No 
more quaint doorways and twisted iron railings; no more slanting 
roofs topped with honest chimneys; no more quiet back yards where a 
man could sit and rest. Out of my way you back numbers! 

So in go the testing drills,— way down into the earth's vitals. Then 
the blasting begins. Never mind your old-fashioned, rickety cup- 
boards holding your grandmother's tea-cups — lock them up in the 
cellar until I get through. Now the caissons are sunk — big round as a 
ship's funnel and many times as long. Down they go, slowly — slowly 
— one foot at a time,— the brown ground-hogs digging like moles in 
the foul air. A swarm of Titans rush in. Up go the derricks,— the 
cranes swing,— half a score of engines vomit steam and smoke. Then 
huge beams of steel,— heavy as a bridge-truss and as thick,— punched 
and ready, are swung into place, and the upward lift begins. Up — 
up _ up — into the blue,— a gigantic skeleton of steel over which is 
stretched a skin of stone punctured with a thousand browless eyes. 

When the height is exhausted,— that is, when the limit of the 
crime is reached — the flat lid is screwed on; partitions are run, dividing 
the open space into cells for the various bees who are to toil inside; 
the eyes of the windows are glazed, shutting out the air; below, in the 

9 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

bowels of the sub-cellars huge fires are kindled, while here and there 
the express cars of a score of elevators mount and fall. 

Outside this prison of industry, the free; those still uncondemned 
— look up in wonder. 

And well they may! 

The vertical straight hne is the hne of the ugly. The rectangular 
is two of these lines conspiring to strangle beauty. These are funda- 
mental laws to the Demon — laws he dare not ignore. Build his 
bee-hive on a curve, or a slant and it would sag like a battered basket. 
How New York will look when the rest of our streets are lined with 
this "dry-goods-box-set-up-on-end" style of architecture with fronts 
but so many under-done waffles, is a thought that disturbs. 



10 



THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE 



Ill 

THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

A GREAT triumph this: the master-work of a great archer who, 
first, in thought, shot this bridge across the river; never in the 
thirteen years of work that followed, doubting his ability to 
make real his dream. 

One wire at a time : the first carried in a rowboat in the hands of a 
boy between towers 272 feet above tide-water, and a mile or more 
apart — 5,268 of these threads of steel; each one galvanized and oil- 
coated, before Number One of the four huge cables was completed and 
men landed dry shod on the opposite bank. 

To-day the huge monster, both legs spread, carries on his flat 
hands the hurr^'ing millions of two cities, the roar of their tumult 
echoing down from mid air. 

These giant engineers — men who have defied the impossible — are 
often forgotten in this our day of satisfactory^ results. 

"Build me a railroad across the Rockies, — here's the money" — 
said a capitalist, and mountains were pierced, alkali deserts crossed, 
subterranean rivers caulked or syphoned, and spider-web bridges woven 
above deadly ravines. And we lie in our berths, a mile beneath the 
snow line in our mad whirl to the Pacific. 

"Fasten a lighthouse to a single rock breasting the anger of 
the Atlantic" — commanded a Government; and "All's well," rings 
out from the port watch, as Minot's Ledge looms up out of the fog. 
"Cut a continent in two" — read an executive order — "so the 

15 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

ships may pass and the West be as the East" — and the day is already 
set when the eager hands of the two oceans will be clasped in an eternal 
embrace. 

Great men these, — and not the least of them Roebling, the Bridge 
Builder! Take your hats olT to his memory- the next time you cross 
his master-work in a fog, your mind on some trip you made in one 
of those big water-bugs of ferry-boats as it crunched its way through 
the floating ice, — the decks black with anxious people. 



16 



r 



THE CITY HALL 



IV 
THE CITY HALL 

HE has been there since 1810, this courtly old Gentleman of a 
once famous School; a thoroughbred to his finger tips, — or his 
cornice line, — of which he is especially proud. 

During all that time he has never lost his dignity nor his fine 
sense of the fitness of things. When inroads were made upon his 
preserves he did not rant : no man of his class, — one with the best 
traditions of the country behind him, — could so demean himself. To 
the vulgar fellow who had insulted him by pre-empting his rear and 
aping his style and manner, he has kept his back turned ever since 
the very day the ground was broken. Indeed if reports of the scandal- 
ous scenes constantly enacted inside his enemy's walls be true, he has 
doubtless been glad that he gave him the cold shoulder in the very 
beginning. 

His only associate was an old chum with whom he frequently 
hob-nobbed, a weather-beaten old fellow in ragged brown stone — 
(since gone to his rest) — who took care of the Records, — a most 
estimable person even if poor. Had not his own coat, in his youth, been 
lined with brown stone ? This fact, indeed, of which he was never 
ashamed, had been one of the bonds of sympathy between them. 

Always the soul of hospitality, he has in his day opened his doors to 
such distinguished men as Lafayette, Edward VII, — then a beardless 
stripling,— Commodore Perry,— to say nothing of such functions and 
celebrations as the opening of the Erie Canal, the laying of the Atlantic 
Cable and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the City Charter. 

21 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

Twice, too, have these same doors been swathed in funereal black; 
— once when the great Martyr, Abraham Lincoln lay in State beneath 
his roof; and again when the author of "Home, Sweet Home," was 
being borne to his last resting place. 

In late years vulgar parvenues have crowded in, shutting out his 
view, — upstarts, most of them, — some as much as twenty stories high. 
Once his enemy in the rear — (for spite, no doubt) — sent a gang of min- 
ions to scrape his face and sand-paper his beautiful columned legs, mak- 
ing gain out of the sacrilege. And yet he has borne it all; he knew 
time would set him right, — and it did. His old tea-rose complexion 
came back, and all the dear lines of the face we love so well shone 
with renewed lustre. 

Classic old thoroughbred as he is, standard of men and manners, 
arbiter of line and guardian of the laws that govern harmony: — one 
sorrow is his, one from which he will never recover. Every day he 
must sit in contemplation of the Mullet-esque, as set forth in his op- 
posite neighbor, — the General Post Office. 

What the old fellow has suffered because of this impudent up- 
heaval of stone, only those familiar with his fine Greek Soul fully 
understand. 



22 



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CASTLE GARDEN 



V 

CASTLE GARDEN 

A MOST disreputable person on the other hand is this bungalow 
of a fort that sits on the edge of Battery Park, as if rumin- 
ating on the dismal failure of its life. In its youth no one of its 
class was more exclusive, set apart as it was from its fellows at the end 
of a bridge. It must have sentries too, and a portcullis; — big guns, 
and a powder magazine: — These to defend the Cause to which it had 
pledged its most sacred honor. 

When these appointments were discovered to be purely orna- 
mental, — the guns never being fired except in honor of the Owner, — 
the people became contemptuous, destroyed the bridge and filled in 
the intervening space. Then the mortars and siege pieces were 
dragged out and sent either to the melting pot or to guard cast-iron 
dogs and lead dolphins in suburban parks. 

Though his friends stormed and raved, swearing dreadful oaths, — 
he had to submit to still another outrage, — that of having his name 
changed from Clinton — a most honorable patronymic — to Garden, 
— one of new birth and, at the time, of unknown origin. 

Then followed the crowning disgrace; — the inner circle of the 
fighting space was floored over; lights were strung; seats for an or- 
chestra arranged and he was given over for a dance hall. 

When taunted for his perfidy he threw back in the teeth of his 
persecutors the excuse that many patriots had, under stress of fate, 
exchanged the sword for the slipper, — quoting any number of French 

27 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

refugees with which the City swarmed and who, at the moment were 
cutting pigeon-wings for a living. 

When the alterations were complete, his old bumptiousness re- 
turned. He would entertain none but the most distinguished. Thus 
it was that Lafayette received a joyous welcome; that Kossuth was 
able to set three thousand people crazy; that opera stars could shine 
for consecutive nights, and that one political party in celebrating its 
victory opened three pipes of wine and forty barrels of beer. 

The one triumphant moment of his life, however, came in 1850: — 
one which came near reinstating him in public opinion, and would have 
done so, had he not been too proud to acknowledge his obligations to 
Barnum, that Prince of Showmen. Never were so many people packed 
beneath his circular roof; mobs besieging the doors; men and women 
pasted flat against the walls, — a wide, clear stage with flickering foot- 
lights awaiting her entrance. 

A curtain parted and she floated out — slowly — gently — as a 
shaft of sunshine moves, iUumining everything about it. Then a 
mighty shout went up; roofs and walls crashed together in the tumult 
of welcome. 

There are a few old fellows still above ground who remember the 
scene and who wiU tell you how her voice soared through the hushed 
air. How like a bird in flight it rose, quivered and rose again until 
every breath was held and tears from hundreds of eyes blurred the 
vision of her beauty. Fat Barnum pounded his white-gloved hands 
until he was on the verge of a collapse, and the house roared and 
stamped for more, and the place became a bedlam, — and so it con- 
tinued until the curtain fell. 

For years afterward only swarms of emigrants — eight millions 
of them, — made a pigeon-roost of these openings, — alighting for a 
day only to spread their wings for a second flight. Of their joys and 
sorrows no record remains, — except the summing up of the size of the 
flocks and the directions in which they winged their way. 

Should you, however, care to .revive one of its old time memories, 
sit down under this same circular roof some afternoon when the shadows 

28 



CASTLE GARDEN 

are lengthening, and while you watch the multi-colored fish glide and 
flash in the old embrasures, let your imagination play over that wonder- 
ful night when Jenny Lind sang out of "a heart full of goodness," and 
if you listen long enough you may, perchance, again catch, echoing 
through the overhead rafters, the cadences of the old familiar song 
that stirred the breathless mob to tears : — 

" there's no place like home." 



31 



BEHIND SHINBONE ALLEY 



VI 

BEHIND SHINBONE ALLEY 

THIS old mansion was built in the days when yard gates opened 
on back alleys; when the owner's stables were on these same 
narrow thoroughfares and the man of the house could call to 
his coachman over the top of his garden wall. 

What painful scrimmage was responsible for the name of this 
particular streetlet nobody knows — no one I have yet asked — but 
it must have been record-making, for it was Shinbone Alley in the old 
days, and it is Shinbone Alley now. 

The Man on the Corner — a garrulous old fellow in throat whisk- 
ers, outside suspenders and spectacles, who sells brass stencil plates 
to the dry-goods merchants hereabouts, for marking their big packing 
cases, and who has lived here forty years, brushed off a low bench 
with his apron after I had shown him my sketch, in which he was 
greatly interested — "both of us working in black and white," — to 
quote his exact words: The garrulous old man on the corner, I say, 
in answer to my question as to who occupied the old house before the 
steam pipe was run through its roof, told me this story, which you can 
believe or not as you choose. 

"There's a mystery about it, — and it ain't all cleared up yet and 
won't never be. That small back building you see behind the wall 
that looks as if it was a part of the big house, is where he lived. The 
big front part was then rented to a paper concern, and that gate was 
cut so they could drive in and out of the yard with their loaded 

35 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

teams. They claimed the small building too, and pushed open a 
connecting door to see what it looked like inside and came bump up 
against him sitting in a chair reading. 

" 'These are my private quarters,' he said, reaching out for a walking 
stick, 'and I'll thank you to get out, or I'll have you up for damages. 
As long as you keep to your side of the house I'm willing you should 
stay, although I don't get a cent of the rent. If you cross that door- 
sill again I'll have you thrown in the street. My law^'er will call on 
you in the morning and tell you the rest.' 

"What happened nobody knows, but the next day they boarded 
up the door, and to make sure papered it over flush with the wall so 
you couldn't tell there ever had been a door. That's God's truth, for 
my father did the papering. 

"After a while the paper concern busted, and then the lawyer let 
the big house to a printer; and when he quit a straw-goods firm moved 
in. None of them knew anything about the door, — except the 
lawyer, — and he never let on. All this time the strange man was 
living on the second floor of the back building — you can see his 
window now if you lift your head — and came in and out through the 
garden gate there, on the alley, which he kept locked. It's all covered 
up with play-bills now, or you could find the old hinges and lock. When 
anybody spoke to him he wouldn't answer — same's if he was deaf. Once 
my ball went inside and I shinned up over the wall and dropped down 
among the bushes and come square on top of him crouching down in a 
corner looking at me like a cat ready to spring — and his eyes like a 
cat's too. I stood staring, and then he crept out of his corner, picked 
up the ball, grabbed my left foot and h'isted me back over the wall. 
And all the time he hadn't spoken a word. 

"Funny thing w-as that some days you would see him coming out 
of the gate with a bundle under his arm, looking like a tramp, and then 
next night you'd meet him rigged out in swell togs and white choker, 
same's if he was going to a ball. He moved quick too, — one minute 
he'd be turning the corner of the alley and the next he'd be gone — 
like a curl of smoke. 

36 



BEHIND SHINBONE ALLEY 

"Sometimes the cops would watch him, thinking he was up to 
some game — keeping a fence, or cracking a crib, or counterfeiting. 
One of the new ones, — just app'inted, — reported to the Captain that 
he had seen him sneak in the gate near dayhght looking as if he had 
just stepped out of his carriage, and while he stood wondering what he 
was up to, he was out again in a ragged overcoat and an old plug hat 
crammed down over his ears. Next day word went around that it was 
all right, no matter what he did. 

"After my father died I took to watching him from my upstairs 
window, or hanging around the corner with my eye up Shinbone. I 
always liked something mysterious and this fellow was all that. Some- 
times there'd be a light shining through his panes of glass till most 
morning, and then again it would be all dark. That's how I kept tabs 
on him. One night I see him stop at the corner cake-stand, wrap 
something up, creep into Shinbone, and then the light flashed up and 
was out as quick. That was something new — was he going out 
again? — or was he short of candles? You see I was young then, and 
full of crazy ideas, and believed in bandits and ghosts. 

"I crept downstairs, opened the door softly and kept my eyes on 
the gate: nothing happened. Then an idea got into my head: — I'd 
tie up his gate, — loose-like, with a bit of string; if he broke it I'd know. 
Still nothing happened. The string held, — held for a week. 

"The next Monday morning a hearse drove up to the front door 
of the big house on the street side, and a coffin went in. That after- 
noon it came out with him inside, and drove off to Trinity Churchyard 
where they buried him close to an old monument with a Revolutionary 
General's name on it, — so the book-keeper of the straw goods firm told 
me. 

"He told me too that the man's father, once lived in the big house, 
and was a crank and that he had had a row with him, and in his will had 
left him the rear building and his brother the front. At that time the 
strange man was rich, and belonged to one or two of the swagger clubs 
up town. When his money was gone he came down here, living on the 
sly, his rich pals thinking he was off shooting, or travelling, or in the coun- 

39 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

tr>-. When some of them invited him to dinner, he'd put on the only 
decent suit of clothes he had, and go. When he had no in\-itations he 
went hungr\'. His lawyer had come to see him that same Monday morn- 
ing on some business, and finding the gate was locked on the inside, got 
the book-keeper to help and the two put their shoulders to the old 
papered-up door and in it went. 

"They found him stone dead, — not a thing in the room but his 
bed and his swell togs. These last were carefully folded and laid on a 
shelf with a newspaper over them. Ever^■thing else he had pawned." 



40 



ELIZABETH STREET 



VII 
ELIZABETH STREET 

ELIZABETH STREET, between Prince and Houston, is an ill- 
smelling thoroughfare, its two gutters choked with crawling lines 
of push-carts piled high with the things most popular among the 
inhabitants, — from a yesterday's fish to a third-hand suit of clothes. 

About these portable junk-shops swear and jabber samples of all 
the nationalities of the globe, and in as many different tongues, fight- 
ing every inch of the way from five cents down to three, — their women 
and children blocking the doorways, or watching the conflict from the 
windows and fire escapes above. 

It is the Rialto of the Impoverished, the alien and the stranded. 
It is also enormously picturesque. Nowhere else in the great city are 
the costumes so foreign and varied, and the facial characteristics so 
diverse. Polish Jews with blue-black beards, and keen terrier eyes, — 
showing their white teeth when they smile; Hungarians in high boots 
and blouses; Armenians, Greeks, Chinamen, — with and without their 
queues, — but wearing their embroidered shoes and pajama coats with 
loops and brass buttons; old women in wigs, a cheap jewel and band of 
black velvet marking the beginning of the part in the hair, and now 
and then a girl in short skirt, long ear-rings and flat head-dress, — so 
graceful and bewitching that your memory instantly reverts to the 
gardens of Sevflle and Pesth. 

One looked over my shoulder as I worked, — it was the luncheon 
hour, and she was out for a breath of fish-laden air — a girl of twenty, 

43 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

with a certain swing and nonchalance about her born of her absolute 
belief in her own compelling beauty, an armor which had never failed 
in her struggle from the curb-stone up. She had dark blue eyes and 
light, almost golden, hair, caught up in a knot behind, and wore a 
man's worsted sweater stretched over her full bosom and held around 
her snug waist by a cheap leather belt. She made paper flowers, and 
lived on the top floor with her mother, — so I was told by the obliging 
baker whose front stoop steadied my easel, — and who was good enough 
to keep the children, in their eagerness to see my sketch, from crawling 
up my legs and secreting themselves in my side pockets. 

"And she's de best ever," he added in up-to-date New Yorkish, — 
"and dere ain't no funny business nor nothin', or somebody'd be hol- 
lerin' fur an amb'lance, and don't youse furgit it." 

I agreed with him before she had passed the third push-cart in her 
triumphant march. The china and tin-ware vender made room for her, 
and so did the button and thread-and-needle fellow, and so did the pet- 
ticoat pedler, each with a word of good-natured chaff. But there was 
no chucking her under the chin or familiar nudge of the elbow. It was 
the old story of dominating maiden-hood ; another of those indefinable 
barriers which, like gray hairs and baby fingers, keep men above the 
level of the beast. 



44 



CLINTON COURT 



VIII 
CLINTON COURT 

TIERE may be worm-eaten, fly-specked records hidden in some 
old brass-handled bureau drawer telling the story of this for- 
gotten nook or there may be, on the walls of our Historical 
Societies, properly framed and labeled data and maps showing why it 
was that this most modest, respectable court was first elbowed, and 
then chucked neck and heels into a corner to make room for once 
aristocratic Eighth Street, — but so far I have not seen them. 

Patchen Place and Milligan Place, and half a dozen others still 
nurse their indignities and will tell you how they hid behind their 
fences expecting that the upheaval would soon be over and their rights 
restored, only to find themselves hopelessly side-tracked and finan- 
cially ruined. 

But after all what difference does it make ? The old-time flavor 
is still left and so are the queer steps that tell of the myriads of passing 
feet, and so too are the queerer roofs that sheltered them — linking the 
past with the present and, almost, without a break; the histor>% so to 
speak, of a hundred years without a single volume missing. 

It was raining when I first saw this victim through the wooden 
gate shutting it off from the surge of the pavements, and began to take 
in its picturesque dilapidation. An old black mammy, a shawl hooded 
over her head and clothes-pinned tight under her chin by one skinny 
finger, was peering out the first doorway on my left, as I entered from 
under the spread legs of the modern house fronting the street curb. 

49 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

"You live here, Auntie ?" I called out. All old black mammies are 
"Auntie" to me. I learned that when I was a boy. 

"Yas, sir, — been yere more'n ten years." 

"Where were you raised ?" That's another of my opening ques- 
tions when I begin to make friends with an old darky. I get the 
State, then, in which they were born, and a minute later the name of 
the old "Marster" who owned them or their fathers. She evidently 
understood, — had, no doubt, been asked that same question before, 
for she bridled up with: — 

"I ain't none of yo' No'th Americans: — I'm from Brazil. Ain't 
nobody roun' yere like me an' dere's nothin' but colored people up- 
stairs and down in every one ob dese houses," and in went her head and 
the door closed with a bang. 

I was glad. I had come to make a study of black and white, and 
the materials were within reach. I passed her stone step, walked to 
the other end of the court and took in its salient features. 

On either side of a short, narrow courtyard sat a row of low, two- 
stor>% dingy, soot-begrimed houses staring each other out of coun- 
tenance, — a pastime in which they have indulged since the days of 
their youth. Those on the right are served with high wooden stoops 
and handrails; those on the left have only squatty stone steps, the 
door-sills level with the brick pavement, which explains at a glance 
one cause of their social differences. Climbing up each front, as if 
determined to be rid of the intolerable situation, fire-escapes mount 
hand over hand, stopping now and then at some window to catch 
their breath. Here and there one more friendly than the others, plays 
cats-cradle with its opposite neighbor across the bricks, — the strings 
laden with the week's wash. 

At the farthest end, — the one opposite the street entrance, — rises a 
high wall, spitting steam through a pipe on its top edge. This shuts 
out most of the light and all of the sunshine, intensifying the gloom. 

Not a flower on any window sill; not a green thing growing; 
no trees, no shrubs, no weeds. No bit of yellow, or red, or blue stop- 
ping a hole in a broken sash, or draping a pane. Even the old pump 

50 



V._ 



CLINTON COURT 

which has worked away for half a century is painted black, and so is 
the single city gas lamp ; and so are the cats that slink in and out — 
(born that way, — not painted). 

Has then the negro, when left to himself, — and he is absolute in 
Clinton Court, — no sense of beauty, no love for flowers, no hunger 
for color ? Rent the smallest room of the dingiest attic in either row 
to a Latin and the first tomato can emptied would be filled with a 
geranium. Why should not the negro do the same thing ? He loves 
music, the double-shuflle and the rattle of the dice. All require imag- 
ination. 

I am going again to Clinton Court when the summer is at its full 
and watch the windows, and if there is still no sign of life you scientists 
who make a study of such things might better get busy. It is a prob- 
lem worth the studying. 



53 



NO. 5 WEST TWENTY-EIGHTH 
STREET 



IX 

NO. 5 WEST TWENTY-EIGHTH 
STREET 

YOU might think you were in Venice within reach of your gondola. 
Here on these stone flags are Uchen-stained pozzos; cracked 
marble seats; crouching Uons; carved mantles ; soup-bowl-shaped 
fountains supported by tailless dolphins,— to say nothing of Venuses, 
ApoUos, Madonnas and Mercuries. 

Up the wall of the adjoining house an ambitious wisteria worms 
its way through a wooden trellis,— just as the grape vines do in Italy, 
— its leaves clustered around scarred bas-reliefs, coats of arms, plaster 
shields, brackets and busts. All about are rusty iron fire-dogs; iron 
chests knobbed with big-headed rivets; pots, pans, shovels, tongs, 
and the motley salvage of an oft-picked scrap heap. 

Half way into the yard stands a low, squat building where my lady 
once kept her carriage. This has a wide-open mouth of a door, and 
above it two little twinkling eyes of windows peeping over low flower 
boxes. When the squatty little building opens its mouth in a laugh — 
and it does at the approach of a customer — you can see clear down its 
throat and as far up as its roof timbers. Inside, under the rafters, 
against the mouldy wafls, hiding the dusty windows, are old furniture, 
stuffs, brass, china in and out of cupboards; miniatures in and out 
of frames; prints, engravings, autographs — one conglomerate mass 
of heterogeneous matter;— some good,— some bad and some abomin- 
able,— but all charmingly arranged and all a delight to the eye so har- 

57 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD X E \\" Y R K 

monious is the coloring and so restful and in\-iting the atmosphere in 
which they are housed. Outside are plates, hanging lamps, signs, 
tongs, bellows, rugs, — nailed up, tied up, plastered up, hung on spikes, 
— all ways and any way so they'll stick tight and can be seen. 

Again I say I might be within reach of my gondola. In fact I 
know just such another place but a stone's throw from the Grand Canal 
and at the rear of Lady Layard's palazzo. The dilYerence is that 
within the City of the Doges the antiques, especially the marbles, 
are car\-ed in a shop at the end of the Campo and soaked in the Canal 
over night, sometimes for weeks, to give them that peculiar XV Cen- 
tur\- tone so beloved by our connoisseurs. Here at Xo. 5, no such 
doubt of their authenticity can arise. The Custom House certificate 
not only proves it, but renders further discussion impossible. 

I hear to my great delight that this Xo. 5 is tied up in some 
way, and that the predator^' Skyscraper is held in abeyance. It may 
be that there is some flaw in the title: or a defective will; or that some 
old skinflint is getting even with a grandson yet unborn. I sincerely 
hope all this, or any part of it is true. I sincerely hope, too, that the 
troubles may continue indefinitely, and that for all time this, or some 
other, open air bric-a-brac genius will here find a resting place for his 
collection. One twist of your heel from the crowded sidewalk and you 
are inside its protecting fence, and not only inside, but away from the 
rush and rmnble, the snort and chug, the crj- of the pedler and news- 
boy; out of sight too, of the monstrosities of modern architecture climb- 
ing up each other's backs on their way to the stars. 

Perhaps the State or City might vote an appropriation to buy it 
and keep it as it is. Don't laugh! Listen: 

In my beloved Venice there has stood for two centuries on the 
edge of San Trovaso, an old Squero where during that time thousands 
of gondolas, barcos and lesser craft have been either made new, re- 
paired or patched, inside and out. Back from the water is a rickety 
building, crooned over by a tender old \Tne, cooUng its parched sun- 
burnt skin with soft shadows. Behind this is a white-washed wall and 
against it always one or more adorable sooty-black boats, — often big 

58 



NO. 5 WEST TWENTY-EIGHTH STREET 

barcos, — and over all the haze from the burning kettles drifting down 
the lazy canal. For all these years it has been the Mecca of the lover of 
the picturesque the world over, painters who gloat over its every line, 
curve, tone and shadow as they do over the gold and bronze of San 
Marco. 

When its last owner died a few years ago, the big flour mill up the 
Giudecca pounced upon the site for a ten-story barrel factory. Then, 
a howl of protest went up that made each member of the Syndic clap 
his fingers to his ears to save his hearing. The next day eighty thous- 
and lira were handed over to the heirs. 

It is still a squero : my own gondola was repaired there last summer. 
Not a single thing has been moved, — not even a pitch kettle. 



61 



THE LITTLE CHURCH AROUND 

CORNER 



THE 



X 

THE LITTLE CHURCH AROUND THE 

CORNER 

THIS patch of green and flowers snuggled close in the arms of the 
Great City, should be holy ground to every lover of the Arts. 
The views of our Clergy are broader than they were in the 
old days when dear George Holland was laid away to rest. Those of 
us who knew him, and who love his sons, still remember the sting of 
that direct slap in the face when his body was refused Christian burial, 
and our indignation and subsequent disgust when all the facts became 
known. Let our dear Joseph Jefferson tell the story in his own 
words : — 

"When George Holland died I at once started in quest of the 
minister, taking one of Mr. Holland's sons with me. On arriving at 
the house I explained to the reverend gentleman the nature of my 
visit, and arrangements were made for the time and place at which 
the funeral was to be held. Something, I can scarcely say what, gave 
me the impression that I had best mention that Mr. Holland was an 
actor. I did so in a few words, and concluded by presuming that prob- 
ably this would make no difference. I saw, however, by the restrained 
manner of the minister and an unmistakeable change in the expression 
of his face, that it would make, at least to him, a great deal of dif- 
ference. After some hesitation he said, that he would be compelled, 
if Mr. Holland had been an actor, to decline holding the service at the 
church. 

65 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

"While his refusal to perform the funeral rites for my old friend 
would have shocked, under ordinary circumstances, the fact that, it 
was made in the presence of the dead man's son was more painful than 
I can describe. I turned to look at the youth, and saw that his eyes 
were filled with tears. He stood as one dazed with a blow just realized; 
as if he felt the terrible injustice of a reproach upon the kind and loving 
father who had often kissed him in his sleep, and had taken him on his 
knee when the boy was old enough to know the meaning of the words, 
and told him to grow up to be an honest lad. I was hurt for my young 
friend, and indignant with the man, — too much so to reply, and I rose 
to leave the room with a mortification that I cannot remember to have 
felt before or since. I paused at the door and said : — 

"'Well, sir, in this dilemma is there no other church to which you 
can direct me, from which my friend can be buried ? ' 

"He replied that — 'There was a little church around the corner' 
where I might get it done, — to which I answered : — ■ 

"'Then if this be so, God bless the Little Church Around the 
Corner,' and so I left the house." 

And so I say — as we all do — "God bless the Little Church 
Around the Corner," not only for that one Christian act but for its 
well-merited rebuke to the hypocrite and the Pharisee the world over. 

I once asked the distinguished author what he understood was 
meant by the term — "A gentleman ?" 

"A man who practices toleration and sympathy," he answered 
quickly, his dear old face lighting up. "Tolerant of the other fellow's 
ignorance, of his hatred, of his narrow-mindedness. Sympathetic over 
his sufferings, his disappointments and his yielding to evil." 

Something like this must have been in his mind when he omitted 
from his book the name of the Reverend Sir who refused his dead 
friend the services of his church. Certain it is that never had his creed 
of good manners been put to a severer test. 



66 



THE GRAND C A X X 
Y E L L W 



OF THE 



XI 
THE GRAND CANON OF THE YELLOW 

IN this narrow gulch of a street into which the sun peeps tmiidly for 
a brief space each day, there is stored above and beneath its asphalt 
wealth enough to pay the National debt. 
Money! Money everywhere ! 

In marble-lined vaults under the sidewalks; behind bronze doors 
guarded by electric bells; inside huge steel globes opened by incorrup- 
tible clocks; in bars — all one man can lift; in bags — (that some would 
like to) — in bundles held together by rubber bands; in drawers and 
on counters, lying loose, — handfuls of it. Here and there, poked in 
a pigeon hole, are envelopes filled with slips of paper about the size of 
a cigar lighter, with one name scrawled on its lower right-hand corner, 

— and another on its back, — both good for millions. 

At the far end of the Caiion, under a bold needle of steel destined 
to prick the tallest cloud — (and did, until another of white marble 
with the eye of a clock in its point, looked down upon it with contempt) 

— is another rich vein of the metal. This time it is hived in tin boxes, 

— some big, some little, — some absurdly and unjustly small — (my 
own among them). 

In these deep pockets neither sky nor sun is seen, — even the air 
is pumped to those who sit and watch. 

Midway the gulch, crowding close, squats the Meeting Place of the 
Money Changers, men who have won out and who, because of their 
triumphant scores, are not only umpires on the rules of the game, but 

71 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

arbiters ol' Iradc; moulders of the coin ot public opinion and sell' ap- 
pointed judges of the Laws of Supply and Demand. These, so to 
speak, are the Board of Directors of the Mine, who meet once a month 
at its mouth to discuss the diggings going on under their feet. 

A few more old landmarks of i)uildings swept away — gashes in 
the sky line — and their sites built upon to the present height of these 
caiions, shutting out our light and air, — the only thing we get for nothing 
— and men will have to carry lanterns in broad daylight to find their 
ofTice doors. 

What might possibly occur if this craze for financial concentration 
in our commercial districts continues, can best be answered by the reply 
that a distinguished engineer once made to me: — 

"What might occur, you ask me ? Well, of course that is a matter 
of figures, of displacement, really, but the probabilities are that if 
some instantaneous signal of flash or sound should send each occupant 
of all the buildings fronting this or any other of our canons flying panic 
stricken for their lives, — in one minute's time the street would be 
packed solid with a struggling mass of terrified human beings, their 
exit blocked by other equally crazed crowds from the side streets; 
in three minutes more the pack would be immovable from slow suf- 
focation, and in five the mound of bodies would be twenty feet high, 
the life crushed out of them by the hundreds who jumped from the 
windows." 

On thinking the matter over, — measuring the width of the gulch 
and the height of the buildings with my eye, — I have about deter- 
mined to remove my small tin box. 



72 



THE STOCK EXCHANGE 



XII 
THE STOCK EXCHANGE 

OXE pastime of the American public is the manly sport of throw- 
ing mud. A shovelful of scandalous mud, — a clean white 
target and many a reputable and disreputable citizen is having 
the time of his life. 

We bespatter our philanthropists, our statesmen, merchants, law- 
yers and di\'ines. We even villify our presidents — this brings intense 
joy — and we keep it up long after they are dead, — unless they hap- 
pen to be mart\Ts, — when we gather up the stones and things we have 
thrown at them and erect monuments to their \"irtues. 

We \-illify our art, our architecture — (I take a hand in that some- 
times myseK)^ our literature, or an\-thing else about which some one 
has spoken a good word. So constant have been these assaults that 
the sore spots on some of our \"ictims have become callous. They 
don't care any more, nor, — for that matter, — do we. There is always 
a fresh target. 

One of the time honored institutions of our land — one which has 
never ceased to be the centre of abuse, — is the New York Stock Ex- 
change. Here conspiracies are organized for robbing the poor and 
grinding the rich; so despicable and damnable that Society is appalled. 
Here plots are hatched which will eventually destroy the Nation, and 
here the Gold Barons defraud the innocent and the unwary, by stock 
issues based solely on hot air and diluted water. Here senators are 

77 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

made; congressmen debauched and judges instructed; — even plans 
consummated for the seduction and capture of the Supreme Court. 

All this is true — absolutely true- — you have only to read the 
daily papers to be convinced of it. 

There is one thing, however, which you will not find in the daily 
papers. It is not sufficiently interesting to the average reader who 
needs his hourly thrill. 

And this one thing is the unimpeachable, clear, limpid honesty of 
its members. 

When you buy a house, even if both parties sign, the agreement 
is worthless unless you put up one American dollar and get the other 
fellow's receipt for it in writing. If you buy a horse or a cow, or any- 
thing else of value, the same precaution is necessary. So too, if you 
sign a will. Your own word is not good enough. You must get two 
others to sign with you before the Surrogate is satisfied. 

None of this in the Stock Exchange. A wink, or two fingers held 
up is enough. Often in the thick of the fight when the floor of the 
Exchange is a howling mob, when frenzied brokers shout themselves 
hoarse and stocks are going up and down by leaps and bounds, and 
ruin or fortune is measured by minutes, the lifting of a man's hand 
over the heads of the crowd is all that binds the bargain. 

What may have happened in the half hour's interim before the 
buyer and seller can compare and confirm, makes no difference in the 
bargain. It may be ruin, — ^ possibly is, — to one or the other; but 
there is no crawling, — no equivocation, — no saying you didn't under- 
stand, — or "I was waving to the man behind you." Just the plain, 
straight, unvarnished truth — "Yes, that's right, — send it in." 

If it be ruin, the loser empties out on the table everything he has 
in his pockets; everything he has in his bank; all his houses, lots and 
securities, often his wife's jewels, and pays thirty, forty, or seventy 
per cent., — as the case may be. 

What he has saved from the wreck are his integrity and his good 
name. In this salvage lies the respect with which his fellows hold 
him. 

78 






Y- ',^ v*'^ 




THE STOCK EXCHANGE 

Every hand is now held out. He has stood the test: — he has 
made good. Let him have swerved by so much as a hair's breadth 
and his career in the Street would have been ended. 



81 



THE UPHEAVAL 



XIII 

THE UPHEAVAL 

THIS hole in the ground — and it is a big one, — or was until 
they began to fill it up with concrete and stone, furnishes an 
outdoor object lesson in the triumphs of skilled labor. 

Few of us can see a tunnel being driven through the heart of a 
mountain, — five thousand feet below the glaciers and seven miles long; 
or watch human spiders spin a web of steel across a South American 
raNlne, its bottom blurred by miUions of tons of water churned into 
mist, — but the units of such deeds are here in this hole on Fourth 
Avenue. 

The same kind of men climb derricks, work the steam drills and 
tend the boUers. The same monkeys in overalls spring from beams 
twenty stories above the sidewalk, or, pipe in mouth, drop vertically 
hundreds of feet astride of an empty bucket. The same silent lone 
fisherman of a Master of Explosives picks his way in search of drilled 
holes, his bait box full of sticks of d^-namite that would send him to 
Kingdom Come if he blundered. 

And then the precision of it all: the huge girders dumped on the 
curb and chained: a wave of the foreman's hand and up she goes. 
Another wave and the boom is lowered, or raised, or swung to the right 
or the left. A minute more and she is in her socket, plumbed and 
bolted, — and so the basket-wea\*ing of steel straws continues. Even 
while you look — between two suns, really, you can see the structure 
grow. Out West — a thousand miles west — they are cutting the 

85 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

stone, but there \st11 be no chipping when it arrives and is lewised and 
is s'vs-ung to the masons. Each piece fits — exactly fits. 

In a few months it will be under roof, and before the year is out 
the sign painters will be putting gold letters on the \s-indow panes and 
another example of utilitarian architecture, known as the Dr\'-Goods- 
Box-Set-Up-On-End Period \sill be added to our avenue. 

I am sony- — not being in diy-goods. I miss the old comer with 
its collection of bottomless haircloth sofas, and three-legged repairable 
chairs airing themselves in the sun on the sidewalk. I miss, too, their 
owner, — old Fay, Prince of bric-a-brac dealers, who would welcome 
me between his lab\Tinths of colonial mahogany, glass, old china, and 
the scrapings of the country- from Georgia to Cape Cod. Even now I 
catch the pungent smell of his turpentine and varnish, that wafted up 
out of the cellar opening on the side street telling of new lamps for old, 
or the making over of the new into the old — which was quite the same 
thing \sith Fay. 

Then again, there are such a lot of diy-goods stores, and such heaps 
of cottons, silks, and woolens, and there are so few such old landmarks 
as Fay's! 



86 



THE SUBWAY — BRIDGE STATION 



XIV 

THE SUBWA Y — BRI DG K STATION 

ALONG the spine of Ihc great stone lizard known as New ^'ork 
Cily, and below its man-piled coverings, liiere lie, as we know, 
many strange creatures: — deadly gas pipes; bloated water 
mains gorged lo bursting; huge pythons, foul and venomous, fed l)y 
carrion, who dare not face the light; and close under its skin, regardless 
of them all, the Hydra of the Subway with its insatiable hunger, ils 
hooded heads thrust out just above the level of the sidewalks where, 
wilh open mouths and blinking glassy eyes, it awaits its prey. 

Singly, — in flurries, in swarms they come, massing like ilies, the 
suction increasing as they feel the snake's hot breath smite their faces: 
— shop girls, boys, old women, tired brokers grabbing a journal as they 
are swept in and down; — clay-stained laborers clutching empty dinner 
pails; women warm in furs; beggars cold in rags — a moving mass of 
all that the great city affords of poverty, wealth, misery and work. 

And so great an appetite has this huge Saurian that three times 
the population of the whole United States, including the Islands of the 
Sea, were swallowed uj) and thrown out during the past twelve months. 
More marvellous still is this year's traffic; an increase of seventeen mil- 
lions over the previous year; a sum equal to four times the present 
population of the city itself. 

Strange to say the flies like it. They are jumbled, whirled, 
bumped, banged, their bodies mashed to a pulp, and yet I repeat, 
they like it. To their joy they have saved six minutes and a quarter 

91 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

of their inexpressibly valuable time, — those who live in Harlem have 
saved nine. That they have no particular use for this increase of 
wealth, once it is safely assured, makes no dilTerence. They have 
saved it. They even gloat over it, — often boast of it, and sometimes 
are extremely disagreeable in their remarks towards those of us who 
would rather lose a day or a week than be whirled into an early grave 
in the elYort to cheat a clock. 

It is the Imp of Hustle, — first born of the Demon of Hurry, who has 
fastened his grip upon them. He it was who made the Subway pos- 
sible, and then with hellish glee, made it profitable. He knew his clien- 
tele; — had seen them grow up; had watched them gobble their 
luncheons standing; devour the headlines of their morning and 
afternoon papers between shunts on the elevated; phonograph their 
correspondence for the use of the girl in the next room, and run for 
street cars. He knew too, what would happen when he pried open the 
jaws of the monster and bade them enter. 

And the Imp made no mistake. Every day the crowd grows denser; 
every hour the grip tightens. Two flags now wave over the mob, the 
first bearing the legend : 

"The survival of the Fittest" — 
And the second that of 

"The Devil take the hindermost." 



92 



MANHATTAN 



XV 
MANHATTAN 

SEEN by day from the banks of either river, it is a city built of 
children's colored blocks piled one on top of the other, — square 
sided, and flat-roofed, with here and there a pinnacle or cam- 
panile tower overlooking the group, — the whole made gay by little 
puffs of feathery steam coquetting in the crisp morning air. 

On the rivers themselves, threading the currents like shuttles in a 
tangled loom, cross and recross the ships of all nations — Not ours, — 
the other fellows. Huge leviathans; ferry-boats from Hoboken to 
Plymouth; high-waisted brigantines in from the Pacific; barks, steam- 
ships; oil tramps — everything that floats carrying every known flag 
but our own. 

All are welcome. Hospitality is our strong point. In fact we 
delight in taking second place, or third,— or even fourth, if it suits 
our guests the better. "After you Alphonse" should have been in- 
serted in the Declaration of Independence, to make clearer the clause 
that "All men are born free and equal." 

For since the date of that historic document we have been keep- 
ing open house to all the world. Last year in Manhattan alone we 
welcomed and cared for nearly a million of these raw, untilled, un- 
lettered and unkempt dumpings; most of them Goths, Vandals and 
Barbarians, — eighty per cent, of them at any rate. And so enormous 
and continuous has been the influx and to such proportions has it grown 
that of our five million of souls almost one-half are foreign born. 

97 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

The worst of it is that with them comes the yeast of unrest — a 
leaven that in the older days worked slowly and in moderation, but 
which in these days ferments so quickly that the only check is the 
mailed hand of the law. Indeed such gentle reminders as "Pay what 
we ask or we blow up the mill," backed by a stick of dynamite, and 
"Down with your flag and up with ours," (a red one,) backed by a 
dirk, are being heard in every direction. 

And this is not all. So busy have we been considering the comfort 
of this influx, and so eager to house them, that we have ignored and 
lost sight of the one thing that other nations less hospitable than our- 
selves hold most dear — the City Beautiful. For boast as we may, 
Manhattan is not beautiful. Not as Constantinople is beautiful with 
countless slender minarets and rounded domes; its fringe of white 
palaces bordering the blue waters of the Bosphorus. Not as Venice 
is beautiful with its marbles and bronzes, and stretches of silver lagoons 
encircled by a necklace of pearls, each bead a priceless example of the 
art of five centuries : Manhattan has only its ugly pile of children's 
blocks. 

No — ours is not a beautiful city — not by day. 

But see it by night ! 

When the shadows soften the hard lines and the great mass loses 
its details; and houses, lofts and skyscrapers melt into a purple grey! 
When the glow-worms light their tapers in countless windows; when 
towers and steeples flash greetings each to the other, and the dainty 
bridges in webs of gossamer dance from shore to shore under loops and 
arches of light; when the streets run molten gold and the sky is decked 
with millions of jewels. 

Then Manhattan rises in compelling glory, the most brilliant, the 
most beautiful and the most inspiring of all the cities of the earth. 



98 



MADISON SQUARE 



XVI 
MADISON SQUARE 

THIS is the Out Door Club of the Over Tired! No dues; no 
complaint-box; no cocktail hour: Every seat free. 
Of course a certain exclusiveness prevails and extreme care 
is always exercised by the Committee of Admissions that no can- 
didate is elected unless the hall marks of the fraternity can be found on 
his person. Not on his hands — and never on his palms: unscarred 
by toil. It is his trousers that count, whether new, whether worn or 
whether half soled — the latter condition passing him with high honors 
and making him Hors Concours for ever after. 

Then there follows a minor test of the number of hours he can 
watch a sparrow hunt for a meal without moving a muscle, or the 
number of the minutes he can sleep behind a last week's newspaper, 
the policeman on the beat believing hun to be wide awake, search- 
ing advertisements for work. 

And they have certain rights — these Knights of the Benches — 
rights that the ineligible tax payer must respect. A few years ago 
there was a revolt against their preemption of these sitting facilities 
and several hundred sterilized chairs were moved in to be rented at a 
penny each. Instantly the tocsin was sounded, the riot act read and 
two platoons and an ambulance carted off the broken heads and legs — 
the latter belonging to the chairs. An Englishman from Hyde Park 
or a Frenchman from the Bois having grasped the situation in its 
entirety, would have laughed himself to the verge of apoplexy — 

103 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

ever>' park in Europe being provided \\ith such chairs in addition to 
the regiilar seats, but there was no merriment among the members of 
the "Over-Tired." The crisis was too serious. Their rights under 
the Constitution had been \iolated — the validity and power of the 
document itself imperilled. 

The discomfited tax payer showed fight. This time he was armed 
with a wide brush and a pot of paint with which he labelled, "These 
Benches are Reser\'ed for Women and Children." 

"Suits us exactly," chorused the Members, and down they sat 
and are there still. 

Once in a great while some pale young girl who has tramped from a 
sweat shop over by the river walks timidly past the row of outstretched 
legs and feet of the Over-Tired to find a vacant seat. Then if a guardian 
of the law happens along the nearest bimdle of rags is brought to life 
by a tap on his shins with a night stick or he is jerked to his feet by the 
scruff of his neck should he grumble, and the girl is seated — but this 
is not often. 

All these hideous vulgarities however fade and are forgotten when 
one loiters through its mosaic of light and shade on one of our early spring 
mornings and catches the shimmer of the new leaves bursting into song, 
all their little cups of green held up to the kind sk\- as if they were offering 
a libation to the gods for being so good to them. On these mornings 
the \Tstas under their branches are softened by the intermingling of a 
thousand tones. Hard lines fade, the rectangular and the straight are 
broken by wa\*ing branches giving you only glimpses here and there. 
Stanford's \\Tiite's tower becomes a bit of old Spain seen above the 
orange grove in Seville and Mc Kim's temple with its pillars and pedi- 
ment a part of Athens. 

Over all is a skv unmatched in brilliancv the world over. 



104 



GANSEVOORT MARKET 



XVII 
GANSEVOORT MARKET 

WEST of its present site there once lay the little Indian village 
of Sappokanican, where in 1609 Hendrick Hudson is said to 
have stopped for provisions. Dried and fresh fish, no doubt, 
Indian corn ofT and on the cob, besides yams, venison and berries in 
exchange for beads and gewgaws: the same kind of bargaining that 
would go on to-day, the money standard abolished, and capons ex- 
changed for spring bonnets. 

Once a market always a market, is the record in most of the cities 
I know. Generally it is found in the centre of the town, surrounded 
by scraggly trees, and bare of everything except a place for carts and 
booths. As the town grows, the bald spot widens, and as the in- 
habitants become prosperous sheds are erected, and then bricks and 
mortar are laid. When their wealth increases steel and concrete are 
piled up. 

The present market, by all the laws of logic, should have been 
named after the old village of Sappokanican. Doubtless it would have 
been had not a slight unpleasantness arisen some two hundred years 
later (1812), between the United States and Great Britain. What 
people ate and where they bought it and when, were questions of 
secondary importance. The point was to let the enemy go hungry, and 
a fort was accordingly built on a small tongue of land thrust out into 
the river, — to the right of where the big ocean steamships now dis- 
embark freight and passengers. Indians had become back numbers 

109 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

except those on wheels outside of tobacco shops, armed with wooden 
tomahawks. Generals, however, were very much to the front, especi- 
ally one by the name of Gansevoort, a distinguished oflicer in General 
Washington's army. So the fort was called by his name. In 1851, 
when it was sent to the scrap heap and the land was filled in around and 
behind it and the present market relocated and built, the name of the 
warlike gentleman followed as a matter of course, instead of the more 
euphonious and altogether more appropriate one of Sappokanican. 

Its old traditions were revived at once, and in the 'fifties men and 
women really marketed, the poor filling their aprons, the rich, accom- 
panied by their men ser^-ants, carrying big wicker baskets into which 
fish, game, vegetables, butter and eggs were carefully stowed and 
carried home afoot, as far as Madison Square and beyond. 

In the 'fifties, too, every good housewife considered it part of her 
duty to see her meat properly cut and weighed, a difTerence of two or 
more cents on the pound being of immense value in her economies. 
The progressive butcher boy had not yet begun his rounds at basement 
doors, nor had the telephone simplified ever>-thing for her but certain 
startling discrepancies and disclosures at the end of the month. 

This, too, was before the trade combinations of fishmen, butchers 
and green grocers made every housekeeper's passbook common prop- 
erty at the weekly meetings of the Clan where prices for the day are 
fixed. 

"WTiat are you charging old Spondulicks for porterhouse?" 

"Thirty-four cents. WTiy ? " 

" Oh ! he blew in here the other day kicking at your bills and wanted 
to try me, so I got to be posted." 

It is not the fault of the Clan, it is ours. We have not the time 
to see our meat weighed, or to pick out a last week's cabbage or a this 
year's chicken at Gansevoort or any one of the other markets where the 
open space is filled with carts loaded with farm truck fresh from the 
soil, free to whoever will buy, and one third less in price than the Clan 
charges. It is the inconvenience, too, that counts. We dare not carry 
too large a basket in the Elevated, and none in the Subway, and the 

110 



GANSEVOORT MARKET 

expressman would eat up the difYerence on what we save or what we 
think we save. 

Manhattan is blessed on two sides with a marvellous water front. 
Every two hundred feet from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil there is a 
street running from river to river. Some of this water front is pre- 
empted and out of reach. Much of it can be bought. Were small 
markets served by boats, — our normal mode of carrying food products 
— established on both rivers, say at every tenth or twelfth street, 
the Middle Man would be out of business. 



113 



EDGAR ALLAN POE'S HOUSE 
AT FORDHAM 



115 



XVIII 

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S HOUSE 
AT FORDHAM 

IT is exactly as he left it : a ground floor room and an attic with a 
box of a kitchen in the rear; close to the small windows looking 
on the street a scraggly fence framing a garden no larger than a 
grave plot, and on the side a narrow portico covered by a roof sup- 
ported on short wooden pillars. It may have been painted since, 
probably has, and here and there a new paling may have been added 
to the fence, but that is about all. Ever^lhing else tells the story of 
its sad past, with the helpless bitter poverty of the great poet. 

For nearly four years he and his frail, slender wife, slept in the 
attic under the low hipped roof,— so low that his beloved Virginia 
could hardly stand upright within its cramped walls. And in this one 
attic room she died. 

During that time all the furniture in the house would not have 
made comfortable one half of either of its two rooms. A few oak 
chairs and tables, a lounge on which his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm — 
"Dear Muddie," — as he used to call her, slept; a chair and his desk 
and their bed, with some vases for flowers, a few trifles and a shelf for 
his books and manuscripts. 

With the gaining of the libel suit against a contemporary, who 
had maligned hun in print, and the receipt of the meagre sum 
awarded by the jury, a few more necessities were added, among them 
a China checked-matting to cover the first floor, which "Dear Muddie" 

117 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

had always scrubbed on her knees, as she had done similar floors in 
their other poverty stricken dwelling places. 

When this was spent the pinch again became acute and the poor 
fellow resumed his weary tramp once more to the different ofTices — 
not many of them in those days — 1846 to '49 — to sell the thoughts 
his brain had coined. When his strength failed Mrs. Clemm would 
tuck the thin slips under her cloak and tramp for him. Sometimes 
there was one meal a day for the three, — sometimes none, — "The 
Raven" bringing only ten dollars, and many of his poems and criticisms 
less. 

What this dear woman was to them both can best be told in the 
words of N. P. Willis: "Winter after winter, for years, the most touch- 
ing sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister 
to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a 
poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell — sometimes simply 
pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for him — 
mentioning nothing but that 'he was ill,' whatever might be the reason 
for his writing nothing; and never, amid all her tears and recitals of 
distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a 
doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and 
good intentions." 

How keen was the suffering she tried to relieve is best described 
in Mrs. Gove's words as quoted in Professor W'oodberry's life of the 
poet: "I saw her (Poe's wife) in her bed-chamber," she writes; "every- 
thing here was so neat, so purely clean, so scant and poverty-stricken, 
that I saw the poor sufferer with such a heartache as the poor feel for 
the poor. 

"There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a 
snow white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the 
sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of 
consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's 
great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful 
cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat 

118 



EDGAR ALLAN POE'S HOUSE AT FORD HAM 

were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held 
her hands, and her mother her feet." 

A short time ago I spent the afternoon transferring the sad homely 
lines of the cottage to my canvas. The sun shone full upon it and the 
cherry trees that Virginia loved were just bursting into bloom. Only 
the dead stump of the big one whose blossoms brushed her window is 
left, but others were near by, and while I worked on, my pencil feel- 
ing its way around the doorway and window sashes through which 
they so often looked; the chimney that bore away the smoke of the 
small fire that warmed them; the old tired creaky porch which had 
responded so often to his tread, my mind went over all the man had 
suffered, and my soul rose in revolt against the injustice and ignorance 
of those who had made it possible. 

And yet, — here is the pity of it, — the same conditions exist 
to-day. 

Worse, really, — for in Poe's time merit, — or what was considered 
merit, — found its way into print. Now it must have, in addition, 
the hall mark of money. The most successful novel of the past year, — 
the author's first, — was hawked about for weeks and sold outright to 
an unbelieving publisher for a few hundred dollars. The author's 
second novel brought in as many dollars as the other had brought in 
cents, only the begging was reversed, — the publishers being the men- 
dicants this time paying him a living wage — paying him his due. 

All true, you say, — and has been true since the day Milton sold 
"Paradise Lost" for the price of a week's board. And will continue to 
be true until the end of time. 

Yes! but shameful all the same. More than shameful, when 
a simple business letter of Poe's covering a page and a half sold a 
short time since for a thousand dollars and the original manuscript 
of "The Raven" for a sum that would have made him and his dear 
Virginia comfortable all their days. 



121 



THE JUMEL MANSION 



123 



XIX 

THE JUMEL MANSION 

STRANGE, almost human things, are houses. 
Each one is started out in hfe with a special purpose; it may 
be the preservation of a period of design; the maintenance of 
a family's aristocratic standard, or the housing and protection of an 
augmented offspring. Then, Hke men, some go to pieces from sheer 
weakness, some lose their own identities in servility to passing whims, 
while others, with individualities intact, keep their compelling dignities 
through every change of fortune, triumphant to the end. 

Changes many and well nigh overwhelming has this beautiful 
house endured in the century and half of its existence, and yet to-day, 
in spite of all its vicissitudes it stands out as a type of the best that its 
time produced. Its youth began in a blaze of glory, when it welcomed 
to its fireside the lovely Miss Philipse who as the American bride of 
Colonel Morris an Englishman, entertained here in stately fashion 
from 1765 to 1775, side by side with their neighbors, the de Peysters, 
the de Lanceys, the Bayards, Van Courtlands and Livingstons. And 
a rare hospitality it was, if we are to believe her contemporaries, the 
polished mahogany deepened by the penetrating play of candle light 
reflecting priceless silver and Spode, the room ringing with laughter as 
flashes of wit swept around the table. 

Then a shiver of anxiety ran through the country, stopping all 
gayeties. War was declared, and over the very same tables where 
Mistress Morris had spread her tea cups, maps were unrolled, and in 

125 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

the very library where she had entertained her guests, grave men 
planned campaigns. General Washington had moved in, and here he 
stayed from September to November 16th. A short lived honor, for 
the British, flushed with victory, seized the house for their own head- 
quarters. 

In 1778 a Hessian General with his German stafT swaggered through 
the halls, and the old house seemed determined to drink itself to death. 
The Germans gone — this was before the literati of the early Nineteenth 
century added their restraining influence, — it continued a downward 
career, even to letting itself be proclaimed a public tavern, the sign of 
the "Calumet House," swinging from its door. Every stage coach on 
its way between Albany and New York stopped and made merry at 
its gates. Sorry days these, bringing many a blush to the cheeks of 
its admirers. 

But the fine blood of its ancestry came to its rescue. In 1810 the 
Jumels reclaimed it. What went on then everybody knows — did at 
the time — or thought that they did, which comes nearer the truth. 
At any rate there was a grand spring cleaning: — such a scrubbing, 
painting and glazing as the old fellow went through had not been known 
in years. All the old cronies, of recent days, were given the cold shoulder. 
Some were turned out of doors. "Nothing shall be omitted to restore 
it to its own once proud estate," boasted the Frenchman. 

Now follows the period of the raised dais. What tales were told 
of it! Of postilions on the highroad as Madame Jumel drove out in 
her yellow coach; of routs and balls; of throngs of diplomats; exiled 
royalties; banished statesmen, and imperialists, including the three 
Bonaparte brothers, Louis, Joseph and Jerome. Last, came Madame's 
second marriage, to Aaron Burr in 1833, an escapade which set every 
tongue wagging from Washington Heights to Bowling Green. 

Although an appreciative literary atmosphere prevailed recalling 
its former days, and poets appeared where courtiers had flourished, the 
poverty of the house was beginning to be apparent. It was getting 
shabby and grey. Worse still, as time went on, the polite world turned 
its back, as new faces were seen at the windows, — rather disreputable 

126 



THE JUMEL MANSION 

some of them. Eat, drink and be merry, was now the creed, for to- 
morrow the front porch will cave in, and the old library topple down 
the hill. These were its most disheartening experiences. 

Ruin now marked it for its own. Its days were numbered. Unless 
some hand were held out, the proud aristocrat would collapse. The 
women heard the cry. The Daughters of the Revolution, rousing 
themselves, went to its rescue. The City Fathers listened. An appro- 
priation was made, and once more its proud doors were thrown wide. 

To-day it maintains its compelling dignity and its individuality 
intact. Its destiny fulfilled. 



129 



THE BRONX 



131 



XX 

THE BRONX 

IKNOW a grey-haired old lady who once told me that when she was 
a child her father often took her to see another grey-haired old 
lady who owned a little farm uptown — a long way uptown — 
where in a back lot there was pastured a cow. One of my old lady's 
childish delights was a drink of warm milk from this cow. The farm, 
and the cow and the old lady who milked her, occupied the corner of 
Madison avenue and Twenty-third street, the present site of the big 
white marble tower. 

Several important changes have taken place since those days. 
Miles of buildings have been constructed; great parks laid out, broad 
avenues cut — highways for future millions, and bridges thrown over 
unfordable streams. 

In its frenzied eagerness to bury its teeth in ever>'thing within 
sight the Great City has here and there run past a quarry — as a hound 
outruns a fox — the game keeping low : — a back lot hiding near an 
embankment; a tired out brook crouching under an abandoned bridge 
or some old Colonial house standing at bay, sheltered by a defective 
title. The Bronx — or rather one little patch of ground through which 
it runs — is one of these : an old meadow really lying between the small 
wooden bridge and the big new one of cut stone, near the Botanical 
Gardens. An oasis of the long ago, is this patch — all willows and lush 
grasses, with big dock weeds flaunting their green flags; thousands of 
buttercups and daisies; grass up to your knees; and contemplative 

133 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD XEW YORK 
frogs sHHsng thmwlMm — oae cyt fised opua yoa vatduBg ymr 




iace I fanilae oat rato bjpcriioie o«cr 

fram flat tioK don to tkc pRseat I hav 

itspEaBes^ J^d stzaage to s^ ia s|xte of al fke 

IB its eovirnmnf^t. ray fittle patcii has be«s kit qb- 



Wkat it mas mha I fint kaev it caa best be tcild by icpeatiiis ] 
stofv of itsdmrnspofafisiMdasCarbackas 1892. What it is to-day, — 
On 19:: — : ^jM|MB%iH g ri a rfdif s. Diliat it mil 
look L tiuv -sbfB tlK liiwMiihaHl dty 
cnisfat ' :* the 

-~ jt€a/'Ibobt ^'' 

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k, vhat hod: ts, I 

Tooflt-:^ — -i;: City of 
the Sijii. — -e ap aiw:' " ^ 

statior " ■ jys sa: 



niots -^ - 

at ydkrw batterl . _ . _ .^ad so oa down to 

T-agnffTc's. 

'^ tdlyos that m s3l my wawdrriagi in search of the pictmcsqiie 
Botfaii^ vithia a d^s jooni^ is hsM as chamnDg; that its stretches 
of meadovs, vflov ffaimiK, aad tai^fed densitifs are as lovely, fresh, 
aad as twlimig as caa be foaad, — y^es^ aitloi a thoasaad aifles of yoar 
door. Ther- ~- -efamistfdmiththetlndaEStof aiossMdBdicas,— 
gfcf, greea, :. — ^ — zd Iwfliiawt eaiecald. That the trees are supeib, — 

its sofiade awH rest r tmn^ iif i ^ 

154 



THE BRONX 

"But you must go now! 

"Now, before the grip of the Great City has been fastened upon it: 
— Now, when the tree lies as it falls; when the violets bloom and are 
there for the picking; when the dogwood sprinkles the bare branches 
with white stars and the scent of the laurel fills the air." 



137 



THE WILLOWS 



L39 



XXI 

THE WILLOWS 

FOR half a mile down-stream there is barely a current. Then 
comes a break of a dozen yards just below the perched-up 
bridge, and the stream divides, one part rushing like a mill- 
race and the other spreading itself softly around the roots of lean- 
ing willows through beds of water-plants, and creeping under masses 
of wild grapes and underbrush. Below this is a broad pasture 
fringed with another and a larger growth of willows. Here the weeds 
are breast high and in early autumn they burst into purple asters, 
and white immortelles, and golden rod, and flaming sumac." 

But I repeat, you must go now. 

You may have but a few months left, — probably only days. 
While I sat before my easel the other morning, they were burning 
brush within sight of my beloved willows — always a bad sign, meaning 
the destruction of the old before beginning with the new. The Evil 
Eye of the Dago was already fixed on some lovely dead branches which 
had fallen at my feet from the gnarled trunks and were at peace in the 
lush grass. They will soon be gathered up; by this time may-be. 
Then the fiend with the shears will begin lopping ofT the twigs and 
bent elbows of the live branches; a little truant stream — an off -spurt 
of the main brook which has always had these willows on its mind, 
and has never failed to water them, — will be spanked by another 
dago's shovel and sent home to join its mother; and the asphalt man 
will spread his foul-smelling and bottomless-pit compound in a geo- 

141 



CHARCOALS OF NEW AND OLD NEW YORK 

metric curve; — and there will be oval or pie-shaped beds of tulips, 
and sloping banks of machine-cut grass coming down to cement walks, 
stamped with the name of the contractor at frequent intervals; and 
exquisite cast-iron or rustic benches, also at intervals — only not so 
frequent; and last, and not least, — and because of all these modern 
improvements, there will be heard the solemn tramp of the park police- 
man in place of the hundreds of birds' songs which to-day are filling 
my branches. 



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